1862 Knowledge for industry and science

From the outset, King’s promised its students a modern education that, unlike the ancient universities, included study in the sciences; and from its earliest moment, scientific research and education at King’s was notable for linking theoretical and practical concerns. Practical medicine was central to science at King’s from its foundation. The physicist Charles Wheatstone developed electrical technologies crucial to the expansion of telegraphy in the 1830s. Civil, electrical and chemical engineering were taught from the early 1840s in King’s new department of ‘Applied Sciences’. By the late-nineteenth century, the college had become one of the leading centres of scientific and medical research in the world, with promising figures such as James Clerk Maxwell and Joseph Lister renowned for innovative techniques and concepts in their fields.

King’s trained medics, engineers and scientists who spread innovative techniques and conceptions throughout Britain, empire and beyond, in fields as diverse as battlefield medicine, tropical diseases, nuclear physics, railway engineering, and colonial irrigation. An important concentration of work occurred in geology, where academics based at King’s such as Charles Lyell, David T. Ansted and Harry Govier Seeley promoted new understandings of the history and structure of the earth, while also furthering the exploitation of coal and other mineral resources. King’s pioneered new training practices and organization in scientific and medical education; a specially notable example was the nursing school established by Florence Nightingale at St Thomas’ Hospital in 1860, the forerunner of the current King’s Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care. King’s scholars transected the Anglo-world facilitating the exchange of knowledge and expertise, ensuring the college became a central node in global scientific and medical networks.

King’s Future. Science and the practical world

The relationship between academic knowledge and the world of power and practice outside the university is a theme through every areas of King’s work. How does the history of science and technology at King’s help the university navigate this relationship now? What should the relationship between scientists, and powerful institutions like business or government be? What kind of role should scientific, technical and medical education train students for? Should it be for national or global roles, and what should the balance be between each?